Introduction:

In our organization we are migrating our messaging infrastructure to O365. As a per-requisites to migrate the EnterpriseVault (EV) data to online archive using a third party tool, we planned to upgrade the EV server from version 9 to 11 as a staged migration. EV 11 server is not compatible with SQL server 2008. So we upgraded SQL server from 2008 version to 2012 version first.

Consider the following scenario for this migration:

We have the following servers

EV server: CHN-PRO-EV01

Old SQL server: CHN-PRO-SQL01

New SQL server: CHN-PRO-SQL

Discover Accelerator Server (DAS): CHN-PRO-DAS

We have migrated the database from old to new SQL server and pointed our DAS and EV server to the new SQL server.

Preparation:

• The VM was already built with Windows 2012 R2 server and named as CHN-PRO-SQL.
• Installed SQL 2012 version in the server with the instance called MAIL
• Downloaded EV SQL migration script from veritas site from the following link and saved it in CHN-PRO-EV01 Enterprise Vault server – https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.TECH214373
• Made sure the “Messaging Queue” is cleared in the EV server
• EV archiving or restoring should not happen during this migration. So stopped all EV services in the EV server. We already planned the downtime. So no issues in stopping those services 🙂
• Stopped the Enterprise vault Accelerator Manager service in the DAS server

Procedure:

• Logged into the old SQL server (CHN-PRO-SQL01)
• We need to take a backup of the SQL database from old server. So created a folder called “evsqldbbackup” in the old SQL server
• Instead of taking backup of each database one by one we used the below script to take a backup at a stretch. You see time management 🙂

• Just ran the script and made sure there is no typo or error. Once confirmed executed it and it started taking the backup of those database to the specified path in the script
• We have ensured that there are plenty of free space as the database size was huge.
  1. You need to take a log size also into your consideration. We collected both database and log file size using the below SQL command to calculate the disc space.

• While it was taking the database backup, logged into DAS server (CHN-PRO-DAS) and pointed the new SQL server in the following files

• It is advisable to take a backup of these files before you change the SQL server instance. So copied and pasted it in a different drive
• In all these files, changed the old SQL server to new one with the INSTANCE name. Like this – CHN-PRO-SQL\MAIL. You can do this by just searching the name in the file called “DNSconfiguration“
• The database got backed up in the old server and saved in the mentioned directory. We copied those database to the new SQL server (CHN-PRO-SQL)
• Now opened the SQL server 2012 management studio in the new server
• Expanded the server and right clicked the database. Then selected the “Restore Database..” option
• In the general page, selected the device and open file option

• Clicked on add button and navigated to the drive where we saved the database copy in this server
• The saved backup file will be in .BAK file format as mentioned in the script. Selected the file and clicked ok. It started restoring in this new server
• Once all database got restored then logged into the EV server
• Opened the PowerShell. Navigated to the directory where the script got saved. Executed the saved script from veritas to migrate SQL server for EV (See the preparation section in this article for the link)
• It will ask you the following information
  1. Source SQL server name (FQDN)
  2. Target SQL server name (FQDN)
• If you have created the SQL with instance you need to mention that as well. In our case, we have entered CHN-PRO-SQL\MAIL
• The script will login to both the SQL server and migrate the server name only for those database found in both servers. In our scenario we already restored all the database to the new server. So we are good to go in this step. It will ask you to confirm it and need to type “Y”

Validating the change:

1. Just made sure it got updated correctly by verifying the following registry value
   1. HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\KVS\Enterprise Vault\Directory\DirectoryService – SQLServer Name
2. Started all the EV services which we stopped before the change
3. Ran a deployment scanner to make sure it is showing the new EV server
4. Ensured the vault store are showing new EV server
5. Ensured able to access the archive using Outlook, OWA, Search
6. Ensured able to create a case and search emails in DAS

Finally the change got successfully completed. Phew!! Please comment below that if you find any shortcut in this process or need some help in the process.